


Marginalia

by lemonsharks



Series: Every Terrible, Necessary Choice [12]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Found Family, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, Kirkwall, Post-Canon, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Warden Anders continuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4361252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Varric Tethras inherits a ten-year-old. </p><p>("I'm eleven."</p><p>"I'm sure that's a very important distinction, but what are you doing <em>here</em>?")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marginalia

There was the beginning of a riot in Lowtown when Varric finally got back to the Hanged Man.

Bottles breaking against yellow brick and badly-mixed concrete, shouts of threat and outrage, and guardsmen's voices sometimes louder than the din. Aveline's people demanding for peace and level heads. By the end of the night, someone was going to set a building on fire; he could feel it. Or, they would _try to_ : the rain had been coming down in sheets for days, and showed no sign of stopping. Not for all the flooded basements and bloated corpses floating out of Darktown that Kirkwall had on offer.

“Why am I helping you, again?” he asked Aveline, at the door.

“Because,” she replied, “The sooner you convince the Merchants’ Guild to accept a districting plan— _any_ districting plan—the sooner we can select a proper leader. The sooner we have that, the soon Hubert stops breathing down _my_ neck for favors he’s not owed.”

“You _know_ they won’t be satisfied with any of the plans you gave them, Red.”

“I live in hope,” she said, turning her head in the direction of a terrified shriek. “I suppose I should go attend to that.”

The problem with Kirkwall—well, one of the _many_ problems with Kirkwall—was that Seneschal Bran, the last person with a solid claim to the Viscount’s seat, had died five years ago. And that no one with a wobbly claim _wanted_ the damn place. What they _got_ , between Dumas’ head rolling across the City Seat carpet and Bran's 'touch of cholera', was rule-by-Templar, rule-by-guard, and rule-by-self-appointed-council-of-idiots.

And while Varric thought the entire idea of letting the people of Kirkwall pick and choose who reigned over them regardless of talent, inclination, or experience was one of the _stupidest_ things he’d ever heard—. Well, _something_ had to change, or the city would break under the weight of its own badly-balanced, disorganized corruption. And Kirkwall couldn’t even go, “Look how much better we have it than those poor sods over there, with demons falling out of the sky every time they turn around!” anymore.

Aveline fell squarely into the very small camp of people who could have walked into the Viscount’s office, sat down, and started running things.

 _Aveline_ did not _want_ to be Viscount.

With that dark thought for comfort, Varric tromped up the stairs, shrugging out of his duster as he went. It shed about two gallons of water between the entry and the door to his room, and probably wouldn’t be dry by morning. But then: Not a lot of things in Kirkwall _would_.

A red-eyed little girl sat at his table, reading.

“ _Why_ is there a _ten-year-old_ in my room?”

She looked up. And then she stood up, closed the book, and dug around in her coat pockets until she produced a soggy letter.

The girl held onto it like you hold onto a broken barrel after a shipwreck.

“I’m eleven,” she said.

“I’m sure that’s a very important distinction, but what are doing you _here_?”

“Are you Varric Tethras?” she asked, clearly and in an accent he couldn’t place. “I’m supposed to wait for Varric Tethras.”

She rounded the table, with her shoulders thrown back and her jaw pushed forward. Either someone had _trained_ her to move like that when she wanted to make an impression, or she’d learned it on her own out of necessity. Not a whole lot of in-between, there.

This kid skinny, even gaunt, but not in the way human kids in the middle of a growth spurt usually are. Her face was thin, too, which made her delicate features look brittle, although she stuck out her pointy chin like passersby might trip and impale themselves on it.

Varric had watched the Hendyr children shoot up like a couple of weeds. While he was almost entirely sure they had consumed a whole bronto between them at least once and _still_ looked like they were mostly made of stacked triangles, _they_ were always had a roundness in the face that this one lacked.

“I’m the dwarf you’re looking for,” he said, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Good, right,” she replied. She held out the letter like some people gave alms. “I’m Carra Hawke.”

On the list of things Varric had not expected to hear: that.

It must’ve showed, too, because the kid— _Hawke’s_ kid? _His_ Hawke’s kid?—started up again.

“My father said you knew him? He gave me a letter to give to you. He told me not to break the seal but—I did.”

She waved her hands around, indicating the letter Varric held, with its soggy paper and bleeding ink. He went to get the spectacles he hadn’t needed twenty years ago, and the kid—Carra _Hawke_ —followed at his heel.

“I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry, this was a stupid plan anyway, I should just go—”

“Will you let me read the thing first before you take off?”

He settled the glasses on his nose and glared up over the rim. This girl had a solid two inches on him, for all she looked like she might break if you breathed on her wrong.

She stopped talking. Her eyes welled, and she brushed tears away with the palm of her hand and sniffed.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Getting upset only ever makes it worse.”

“Just…Give me five minutes to take this in.”

Even wet, Varric knew the spikey, frenetic handwriting. He’d read hundreds of pages in it, somewhere between raving and carefully constructed declaration of rights. He sat on the foot of his bed smoothed the page as well as he could.

  
  


_Varric—_

_I felt the Calling again five months ago.It will not be long. There is no one here I trust._

_They do not remember loving Hawke, and every one of them has come to hate me._

_She would have wanted you to have the care of our daughter, though you failed to keep_ her _safe—and I have_

_I can’t find Bethany. Nowhere else to go._

_Please._

  
  


When Varric looked up, Hawke’s daughter had put the table back between them. She leaned into the bookcase and folded her arms across her chest.

 _Hawke had a kid_ , he thought, and tried to imagine her with a baby in her arms, or a toddler on her hip. He came up with nothing, with yeas-old memories, fuzzy in the center and crisp around the edges. He couldn’t even picture her face anymore—and she would have _said_ —

But she had tried, hadn’t she? The morning Trevelyan had gathered up her people and ridden off for Adamant, Hawke had come to his hearth with a flask and a piece of news that couldn’t wait. She’d been cut off, driven forward, and she hadn’t come back after.

“ _You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. If something happens to me,_ promise _you’ll find Anders and— ”_

“ — _Nothing’s going to_ happen _to you.”_

“ _Promise me—”_

“ _All right—_ if _something happens,_ which _it won't—”_

“ _You’ll find him?”_

“ _I’ll find him.”_

She had caught him up in a hug, and been out the door. Varric had written a _letter_.

And oh, had he _ever_ messed up this time.

Varric laid the letter out to dry—she might want it later, even if he had half a mind to track Anders down and drag him back by the ear right now. He couldn’t have gotten far; it took a solid two days to get to the foot of Sundermount, and—

And what then, let Hawke’s daughter watch the only family she knew turn into a monster?

The girl— _she has a name_ —dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

“When was the last time you ate, Chickadee?”

“Last night. It’s okay, though, I don’t really like breakfast anyway.”

“Or lunch, or _dinner_ , apparently,” he replied.

She looked _abashed_ and very, very slightly amused.

Varric cracked his neck, and pulled his coat back on. Still wet, but he knew better than to feed a new arrival anything out of Corff’s kitchen.

It was, he decided, a start.


End file.
